Leon Trotsky

“ The State strove to makese of the developing economic groups, to subject them to its own specialized financial and military interests. The dominating economic groups, as they arose, strove to use the State to consolidate their advantages in the form of estate privileges. In this play of social forces, the resultant went much more in favour of the State power than was the case in the history of Western Europe. ”

“ As indicated above, the Russian State consumed a comparatively large share of the forces of the nation, thus hampering the process of social crystallization, but it needed this process for its own purposes. It is natural, therefore, that under the influence and the pressure of its more differentiated Western milieu, a pressure that was transmitted through the military-state organization, the State in its turn strove to force the development of social differentiation on a primitive economic foundation. ”

“ Russian thought, like the Russian economy, developed under the direct pressure the higher thought and more developed economies of the West. Since, owing to the natural-economy character of economic conditions, i.e., the poor development of foreign trade, relations with other countries bore a predominantly State character, the influence of these countries found expression in fierce struggle for the existence of the State before expressing itself in direct economic competition. Western economics influenced Russian economics through the intermediary of the State. ”

“ Estate [1] and class differentiation, which is determined by the development of the division of labour and the creation of more specialized social functions, presupposes that the part of the population employed on immediate material production produces a surplus over and above its own consumption: it is only by alienating this surplus that non-producing classes can arise and take shape. ”

“ Estates cannot be created bytate action, by law. Before one or another social group can take shape as a privileged estate with the help of the State power, it must have developed economically with all its social advantages. Estates cannot be manufactured according to a previously established scale of ranks or according to the code of the Legion d’Honneur. The State power can but assist, with all its resources, the elementary economic process which brings forward higher economic formations. ”

“ The national economy, which was naturally developing from natural economy to money-commodity economy, responded only to those measures of the Government which corresponded to its development and only to the extent that they corresponded to it. The history of Russian industry, of the Russian currency system, and of State credit, are the best possible evidence for the above opinion. ”

“ The learned panegyrist of industrial Protection forgets to add that the policy of the Government was dictated not by any concern to develop industrial forces, but purely by fiscal and in part military-technical considerations. ”

“ Furthermore, the division of labour among the producing classes themselves is possible only at a certain degree of development of agriculture, capable of ensuring the supply of agricultural produce to the non-agricultural population. These fundamental propositions of social development were already clearly formulated by Adam Smith. ”